The big news in American Catholic circles is the Obama administration’s “contraceptive mandate.” This latest unethical intrusion of big governmnet stipulates that employers, including religious institutions, provide their employees with insurance coverage for contraceptives, sterilizations, and specific abortifacients such as Ella and Plan B.

Catholic Action League Executive Director C. J. Doyle summarized the situation: “If this unprecedented aggression against the religious freedom rights of Catholics is allowed to stand, then virtually all Catholic institutions — colleges, universities, secondary schools, hospitals, charities, service providers, fraternal orders, and advocacy organizations — will be forced to pay for procedures, devices, and chemicals abhorrent to the consciences of Catholics.” Read More »

It was great news to hear that Verastegui’s own Guadalupe Medical Center has opened in Los Angeles. He calls it an “oasis of life” in a “desert of death.”

CNA reports: Former Mexican soap opera star turned pro-life activist Eduardo Verastegui told a crowd of over 500 that he thinks abortion in the U.S. will one day come to an end. “I think we will see regeneration and the end of abortion in this country,” he said at a sold out Jan. 26 fundraiser for Lighthouse Pregnancy Center in Denver, Colo. Read more here.

INO is an abbreviation for “in name only.”

Catholic Culture: In a 28-21 vote, the Washington state senate approved a measure that would legalize same-sex marriage. The bill is expected to pass in the state house and be signed into law by Gov. Christine Gregoire, a Catholic.  More here.

National Catholic Register’s Joan Frawley Desmond: Steve Mosher was a rising Stanford University social researcher, schooled in the academy’s received wisdom on matters like abortion and the “right to choose,” when he was suddenly thrown off course. Read full article here.

Archbishop Gregory Aymond of New Orleans, Bishop David Zubik of Pittsburgh, Bishop Daniel Jenky of Peoria, and Bishop Paul Loverde of Arlington, Virginia are among the bishops urging Catholics to oppose the Obama administration’s mandate that requires religious agencies to offer contraceptive and sterilization coverage to their employees. Read more here.

Scott Richert for About.com Catholicism: Thirty-nine years after the January 22, 1973, U.S. Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade, it is all too easy to convince ourselves that the fight against abortion has been lost. The majority of Americans alive today do not remember a time in which the killing of the unborn, at almost any stage of pregnancy and for almost any reason, was not legal. Every year, for 39 years, approximately 1.3 million children have been sucked or cut or flushed from their mothers’ wombs, while the number of families who are forced to remain childless continues to rise, because of a shortage of babies available for adoption. Read full article here.

California Catholic: “Any government leader, particularly those who claim to be Christian, who claim to be pro-choice, is unworthy of public office,” Bishop Vasa told the rally at Old Courthouse Square in Santa Rosa on Jan. 22. “Absolutely unworthy and absolutely unfit for public office.”  Politicians who support abortion are “as guilty of abortion as those who choose it themselves,” he said. And Roe v. Wade, said Bishop Vasa, was an “illicit and invalid” decision. Because of its pro-abortion policies, said Bishop Vasa, the U.S. is no longer “the land of the free and the home of the brave. It’s a land of the imprisoned and the home of the cowards.” Read full report here.

Emil Hagamu for LifeSiteNews: What we need in Africa is better education for our children based on sound intellectual and moral values; good roads to transport our agricultural products; reliable electrical power to accelerate development; clean water; and above all, Africans need respect from people in the West, not condescension and demands that we stop having more children. We do not want our continent to be a dumping ground for contraceptives and condoms; we do not need to be sterilized; we do not need abortion. Read full article here.

By imperial edict, and as a dark insult to pro-lifers who were preparing their annual march to the Capitol to protest Roe v Wade and the ensuing murders of the pre-born, President Obama and self-deluded “Catholic” Kathleen Sabelius of the Department of Health and Human Services  have given new meaning to the word dictatorial. Genuinely Catholic and pro-life employers have been issued an ultimatum. They have one year to decide if they will serve God or the leviathan state. What boldness! What injustice! Read More »

LifeNews: Planned Parenthood has a response to the federal appeals court decision allowing Texas women a chance to see an ultrasound of their baby before an abortion. They call it “abhorrent.”

Writing for the court, Chief Judge Edith Jones was frank about the other side’s failure “to demonstrate constitutional flaws with the law,” which requires women to have a sonogram 24 hours before an abortion. Judge Jones said the state has “legitimate interests in protecting the potential life within her.” More on this here.